Senate defers final action on charity gambling bill
NASHVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee Senate debated the charity gambling bill for several hours on Thursday and amended it slightly before deferring action until Monday because there weren’t enough votes left in the chamber to pass it.
Thursday is the last day of legislative business for the week in Nashville, and lawmakers began drifting out of the chamber to go home as the debate dragged on past lunchtime. After about three hours only 23 of the 33 senators were present, and according to the count of bill supporters only 15 of those were “yes” votes. It takes 17 to pass a bill.
So sponsor Sen. Jim Kyle, D-Memphis, referred the bill to the Finance Committee for a hearing on Monday, with the specification that the bill would be returned for consideration by the full Senate at Monday night’s session.
Charitable gambling events were allowed by the constitutional amendment approved by voters in November 2002, which also paved the way to creation of the state lottery.
However, some lawmakers fear a return to the state’s last foray into charitable gambling, which ended with the massive federal “Rocky Top” corruption investigation in the late 1980s and included the indictments and suicides of some state officials.
There were 58 amendments to the charity gambling bill before the Senate on Thursday, many of them by Sen. Roy Herron, D-Dresden, attempting to plug what he considers its pitfalls.
“I’m concerned that the money isn’t going to go to charity, and that not only the potential but the certainty of corruption and abuse is there,” he said.
Three substantive amendments were adopted.
One was written specifically for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis that would allow it to raffle off four houses in one day, as opposed to just one.
Another, sponsored by Herron, would more closely define what games could be played at the charity events, eliminating lottery-like games. The charity games would be restricted to raffles.
The third expanded the bill’s provisions to allow a single venue to host two charity gambling events per week. It had said a venue could host only one event per year.
“I respectfully suggest that if you want a gambling hall set up in your district every Friday and Saturday night, this gets you where you want to go,” Herron said in arguing against the change. “I understand some of us want to set up gambling halls. If you let folks do it 104 days a year at one single location, it’s essentially unlimited. The central reform was limiting it to one event per site per year. If we adopt this we have gutted those protections.”
Sen. Steve Cohen, who sponsored the amendment to allow two events per week at the same place, said it would be impossible to make an enterprise out of it in such a limited time.
“That’s not going to happen,” he said. “Forget the fantasy, the fiction, the paranoia, and help your groups have events at the local hall.”
That amendment was adopted by a vote of 21-6.
Gov. Phil Bredesen, who stepped in two weeks ago to put more safeguards into the bill, said he didn’t think venues should be limited to one event per year, but that “two a week sounds a little high.”
Later, the Senate adopted, then reconsidered its action and defeated, an amendment by Herron to require that at least 35 percent of the gross proceeds of an event go to the charity.
The original vote was 12-10; but Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, said he got distracted and voted the wrong way. Since he voted with the winning side he could, and did, ask the Senate to reconsider its action. On the second vote the amendment failed 11-11, with one abstention.
As it now stands, charities get 100 percent of the net proceeds, after expenses. Herron said there are not adequate safeguards to ensure those expenses are not used by unscrupulous operators to siphon all the money off, leaving nothing for the charities.
“You don’t need this for the good folks,” Herron argued. “The good folks will do this anyway. But there are folks out there who will take money in the name of charity and put it in their pockets an in their friends’ pockets. If there weren’t people out there who would do wrong we wouldn’t need any of this.”
The bill is scheduled for floor action in both houses on Monday.
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See Senate bill 3212 at:
Tennessee General Assembly, http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/